


Island Time

by gwyneth rhys (gwyneth)



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Australia, Drift Bond, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Idyll Challenge, Life During Wartime, M/M, R&R, Swimming, Team Hot Dads, tropical island
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 18:27:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth/pseuds/gwyneth%20rhys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Herc and Stacker take some R&R. Too bad Stacker doesn't know how to relax. Written for the Idyll Challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Island Time

Sun poured over his skin like gold liquid as the cold of the Alaska Shatterdome melted away at last. A beautiful beach, a tropical island in the Great Barrier Reef, and Herc Hansen at his side; for the first time in years Stacker Pentecost didn’t have responsibilities and it was just...weird. Warm, but weird.

He liked being warm, though. 

Never mind his hands continually reaching for his tablet or phone, the certainty of the PPDC not functioning without him firing down his nerves and muscle tissue, causing reflexive grasping motions for accoutrements that were not there. Herc had threatened to throw the electronics in the turquoise waters on the boat trip to Green Island from Cairns. “If you don’t turn them off and keep them in your bag, I’ll smash your gob in,” he’d said with a smile, as if he wasn’t a subordinate, as if Stacker wasn’t his commanding officer and didn’t have three inches and quite a few kilograms on him. 

Not that he’d been Herc’s commanding anything for that long. The whole Marshal thing still felt surreal, though when positioned against the fact that the world was at war fighting giant monsters with giant robots, his change in status was a fairly small wrinkle in the fabric of reality.

Stacker restlessly repositioned himself on the chaise, certain there was sand in body parts there shouldn’t be sand in. He rustled around in the gear bag, looking for his sunglasses.

“It’s been _fifteen minutes_ ,” Herc growled. That was a lie. It must certainly have been more than an hour. “What is your problem, mate? Relax. You were _ordered_ to relax and rest.” Herc didn’t even raise his head or open his eyes.

“I fail to see how sitting here on lounge chairs staring at sand and water will affect my physical or mental health. There are things need doing--”

“That can be done by others. Christ, Stacks, you’ve been griping about this since you landed in Oz.”

“Put some sunscreen on, you’re already turning red,” Stacker snapped. “Why do gingers even bother going out in the sun?”

He held up one finger. “I already have some on.” Raised another finger. “That’s why we have an umbrella for shade.” Lifted a third finger. “You’re changing the subject.”

“This is...” Boring was not the word he wanted. They’d arrived earlier that day, after Stacker had slept off some of the jet lag. He hadn’t seen Sydney since shortly after Scissure attacked it; the changes to the city, to the whole country really, were sobering. But except for that sleep, he’d been in perpetual motion until they’d pulled up these beach chairs, and now he didn’t know what to do with himself. “It’s frustrating.”

“That’s because you haven’t had enough to drink,” Herc said, and his eyes were still closed, his hands clasped together over his tautly muscled belly. Stacker noticed that he had some new ink on his shoulders; he’d added another Jaeger to his tattoo collection. His frustration was momentarily swept away by pride in his friend’s accomplishments, reminded of everything he’d achieved in the program.

“Ah, I shouldn’t, not with my meds,” Stacker said in resignation, but Herc simply reached down next to him, opened one of the beers the resort staff had brought, and handed it to Stacker.

“It won’t kill you. Being a rigid tower of stress with a stick up your arse will.” He opened his own beer, then plopped his sun hat over his face and said, “So you have a hard time doing nothing. Go swimming. Pretty fish, bloody great turtles. You’ll love it. It’s not like Alaska.”

“Never was much of a swimmer, mate. We didn’t exactly have private pools or take beach holidays growing up in Hackney.”

Herc said in his deep, smoky-embers voice, “When in Rome,” and suddenly the idea became incredibly appealing.

Stacker blinked. Things like that always happened with Herc -- his voice just did things to Stacker he couldn’t explain, like some kind of hypnotizing drug. In the early days of the program, it had got him in rather a lot of trouble.

The war was going well, as well as any could, considering what they were doing. Kaiju attacks were usually months apart, so this was perfect timing. The brass were confident enough in their program to force him on holiday leave, though they’d had to recruit Herc -- and make use of their friendship -- to get him to say yes. Now that they knew about the radiation sickness and the cancer spreading through his body, he couldn’t avoid their concerns. He had tried his best to beg off, using Mako as his last-resort excuse, but Mako could take care of herself by this point -- and there were enough people to look after her at the Shatterdome, anyway. 

After having switched co-pilots a few times, Herc believed he needed some R&R as well. As drift-compatible as Hercules Hansen was with just about everyone, getting to know your co-pilots, developing that level of comfort, took a toll on your psyche. Herc would never complain, but Stacker knew him enough to understand what “I’d like some down-time too” actually meant.

Somehow they’d both ended up here, sitting on a beach looking out at azure waters, and wondering what the hell he was going to do with himself for the next ten days. Stacker got up, pulled his t-shirt off, and turned toward the water. Herc waved his fingers at him, not even bothering to lift the hat up. “Have fun, don’t get burned,” he said. Stacker rolled his eyes and gave him two fingers that Herc probably couldn’t see, waded into the shallows, and swam out, the experience of being in water without a Jaeger to protect him as strange as ever.

 

Herc watched Stacker disappear into the water, trying to make sure he didn’t see him watching. Fussing over Stacker was the worst thing you could do to him, but that didn’t mean Herc wasn’t going to do it. Since they’d first discovered Tamsin Sevier’s cancer, Herc had helped Stacker hide his own sickness as long as he could. They’d both known something like that couldn’t stay under the radar forever, especially when the symptoms -- the fatigue, the nosebleeds, the vomiting -- became noticeable. Stacker didn’t want treatment, having seen how it had ravaged Tamsin’s body, and Herc got that, he did, but still...the world without Stacker Pentecost in it was one he didn’t want to live in.

The first step toward keeping his illness at bay was rest, and when the brass had contacted him to use his influence to get Stacker out of the Alaska Shatterdome, Herc had jumped at the chance. He hadn’t been to Green Island since his honeymoon; many memories, too, of coming up as daytrippers with his family when he was young. You could forget the world was at war in a place like this, forget you lived in a metal bunker with hundreds of people around you, forget that you’d lost so very, very much.

Now that Herc was jockeying Jaegers back home in the Sydney arena and Stacker was running the show up in Alaska, they didn’t see each other enough. And with Stacker’s adoption of Mako Mori, both of them were now raising children alone. Yet as soon as they’d reunited, Herc had known that the miles in between them couldn’t distance their friendship.

In the aftermath of Scissure’s attack on Sydney, learning to live with the choices Herc had made were made so much easier with Stacker’s friendship. His gentleness, his strength, had been a beacon and created a path for Herc to follow when it was so dark he may as well have been blind.

No friendship so strong as one between brothers in arms. Or the one between two people who’d lost what they loved in wartime.

He moved his chair further back into the shade, adjusted the umbrella, and finished his beer. The trip up to the island had been filled with other people, so they hadn’t had much chance yet to catch up, though maybe that wasn’t something they needed the way normal people would -- the times they’d spent in the drift held them together, a force that connected them, minds, souls, hearts.

All along the way people had responded to them with such gratitude and generosity -- everything they could do above and beyond the call of duty, everything provided with a “thank you for your service” and an almost reverential tone when they said _Ranger Hansen_ or _Marshal Pentecost_. Though the resort here had fewer guests these days, they were showered with offers of meals, drinks, anything they wanted, from everyone they met. Stacker excelled at appearing thankful about such offers even if he never planned to take advantage of them, although at first he’d been uncharacteristically grumpy until Herc had said, “Making friends everywhere you go.” Stacks had then abruptly increased his graciousness level and lightened his mood.

But it humbled them both: the fortunes of the world had changed since K-Day. No more cruise ships streaming across the Pacific; travel had to be carefully calibrated based on Kaiju activity. Tourist economies had been devastated and the places which had relied on that had been forced to change their ways of living. Sydney was a shadow of itself now, areas uninhabitable that had previously been available only to the richest of the rich. Life in the shatterdomes, weeks spent traveling from place to place getting the Jaeger program off the ground, had left the Rangers somewhat inured to the effects of economic collapse and hardship in the war zones. They were the new rock stars, the new heroes, less affected by the suffering. But they knew with each combat drop their own fortunes could change, all too easily.

A shadow fell across him and he tilted the hat up, smiling at a glistening wet Stacker. “There now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Herc hadn’t seen him stripped down like this in so long, the strength of his huge shoulders as he flexed and moved, the wide chest bare and its sparse, dark hair shimmering with water, as was the trail of hair down his stomach to underneath his waistband. He was such a big man, but he moved with surprising grace; Herc had always admired how comfortable in his own skin Stacker seemed.

Stacker toweled off, flicking water at Herc. “No, it wasn’t. Bit of a shock to the system at first, those waves seem gentle but they pushed me back a couple times. Reminds me of teaching Mako to swim in Hawaii.” He lay down, closed his eyes, fished around for his beer. Herc placed the can in his hand and then ran his fingers over Stacker’s biceps muscle a few times. Stacker patted his hand. In the early days of their friendship, Stacker had been surprised by Herc’s easy familiarity and casual touches. He said he’d never met a man who seemed so at ease with being physical around other men, and it wasn’t at all like any Australian bloke he’d ever met. But Herc had sort of worn him down, and now Stacker allowed the contact, even if he rarely initiated it.

“Glad you liked it. Look, mate, I picked this place because it would help you relax. But if you’re that restless, we’ll do something tomorrow. We could scuba dive. I could teach you, I’m a certified instructor. No need to even take the class here.”

Stacker laughed. “ _Of course_ you are. Of course.”

Gobsmacked, Herc didn’t know what to say. He just squinted at his friend, beer in mid-air. 

“It’s nothing, sorry. Just...is there anything you can’t do? I mean, you fly fighter jets, you fly bloody choppers, you have a third-degree black belt, you climb mountains, you’ve piloted all the Jaegers. Why shouldn’t you also be a dive instructor?”

“Can’t sail a boat. Can’t program a computer. Can’t manage a bunch of people and motivate them to fight a war against aliens we don’t understand.”

“Yeah, right, point taken. It’s only, sometimes you seem a bit...outsize, you know? Larger than life.”

“Lot of people say the same about you.” Herc was continually surprised at how unaware Stacker was of his charisma and magnetism. How could you go through life being that attractive, have people willing to do almost anything for you, and not recognize it? “I can’t seem to raise my son properly, is another bit I can’t do.”

Stacker winced sympathetically. “Yeah, sorry mate, I’ve meant to ask you how Charlie’s doin’.”

“It’s Chuck now. Up in Alaska, all the Yanks called him Chuck, and he decided he liked it better.” He drained his beer. “I suppose because it makes him feel less like my son, choosing his own nickname.”

The swim must have really relaxed Stacker, because he reached an arm languidly across, rubbing his hand over Herc’s forearm. “It’s hard to hear that. We’re in uncharted waters, we dads. No training for this.” 

“Too right.” Herc didn’t really want to think about Chuck right now; it would be soon enough when he’d be back dealing with his permanent state of disappointment in his father.

“His application to the academy came across my desk the other day. I assumed you knew.”

“He wants to be my co-pilot. I guess there must be some residual filial love still there.” He laughed, but it stung. He pulled his t-shirt on. “Look, it’ll be teatime soon, how ‘bout we swim some more and then get something to eat? If it wasn’t so late we could body surf.”

Stacker turned to him and raised an eyebrow. “Body surf?”

“You know, ride the waves without a board. How do you not know this?” He waved a hand. “We’ll do that when there’s a better tide. Floating’s all I’ve energy for, anyway.” He paused, looked at Stacker’s dark brown eyes, remembered what it was like to be connected to him, to see inside him, feel him all around. “It’s...like the start of the drift, you know? Rising and sinking, being pulled into something. That’ll do me fine.”

Stacker followed Herc into the water and they swam out to float, carefree for the first time in years. They let it take them toward the beach, the gently undulating rhythm of the water pulling them apart, bringing them together again. Every once in a while he would right himself, paddle a little, then lie back, eyes closed. At one point, when Stacker’s body came close to his, he reached out and clasped his left forearm, and they drifted like that, the sun beating down on his wet skin, the salt drying on his lips only to be washed away by the next little swell that splashed over him.

So many drifts behind them, months apart, new co-pilots and new responsibilities, and he could still feel that link. They said the pilots left traces of the neural handshake inside the Jaegers, that ghost memories remained in the metal -- technicians had reported spontaneous movements in the mechas long after their pilots were gone. Herc believed in that, believed too that the drift lingered in the Rangers’ minds long after they disengaged. _If_ it was strong enough -- and it had always been strong enough with him and Stacker.

Just for the hell of it, he sent a thought out: a memory of them in the kwoon, sparring, of holding Stacks under his bo until he’d tapped out, and then pulling him up, bodies close, breathing each other’s breaths. After a few seconds, something came back to him: //got your six// _something bright, flashing, a smile maybe behind the glare of a helmet_ //my hand on your back// //he’ll learn to love you like I do//. His chest grew tight, full. They were in the drift together, always. 

 

Exhaustion caught up to Stacker at dinner. Despite the relative luxury of the PPDC jet, travel from Alaska to L.A. to Sydney to Cairns to the island left him bone-weary, attention wandering even as Herc recounted his most recent combat drop. They finally went back to their suite -- the biggest one at the resort, not something that in the days before the war he could ever have imagined staying in -- and Herc put both his hands on Stacker’s shoulders, pushing him down on the sofa and kneading some of the stress out. 

“I’m going to stay up, luxuriate in watching whatever I please on TV, and drink to excess,” Herc said, his low, silk-wrapped-in-sandpaper voice tickling the back of Stacker’s neck. “I don’t even remember what it’s like to not have a thousand people buzzing round me like flies. Or not having to be combat ready at a moment’s notice.”

Stacker leaned his head back against Herc’s arm, enjoying the solidity of him, his warmth. Still wasn’t real -- couldn’t be -- that he was away from the war, away from the responsibilities of millions of lives hanging on his decisions. “I’m glad you’re here with me, mate. I’m glad you made me do this.”

“I’m just the babysitter,” Herc said, waving it away. “If I couldn’t convince you to go, they’d have sent in the big guns and put Miss Mori on the case.”

Stacker grunted at the thought of everyone plotting about him. Herc brushed a hand over his scalp, sending thousands of electric impulses through his skin, and then hauled him up by the arm. “Head to bed.” Stacker hadn’t even got his trousers undone before he fell onto the bed face first and was asleep.

In the morning he woke to the smell of bacon, coffee, and toast, stumbling out of his room to see Herc sitting at the small table in just a pair of sweats, reading the news on his tablet. It wasn’t that Stacker didn’t have access to food like bacon or coffee, as Marshal he wasn’t as restricted, but he tried not to indulge in privileges others didn’t have. Sometimes he gave in -- especially when it related to Mako -- but he mostly stayed away. “Morning, H,” he mumbled, rubbing sleep from his eyes. Herc smiled up at him, poured him coffee -- remembering that he liked it with a little milk but no sugar -- and pushed toast across the table as he sat down. “Cheers. How long did I sleep?”

“About twelve hours.”

“Feel like a new man.”

“You look it. Your color’s improving.”

Stacker rolled his eyes. But he noticed that Herc looked a bit like a new man himself, more at ease and comfortable than he’d ever seen him. In those early days after Scissure, after losing Angela, Herc had taken emotional refuge in a steely remoteness, only letting his guard down around Stacker. He’d understood that -- what you needed to get through each day, to grapple with the reality of what your world has become. To become a Ranger. But he’d paid the cost in the relationship with his son. Now without Charlie -- Chuck, he reminded himself -- here, away from barracks and shatterdomes and training and the smell of metal and oil and solder, he seemed almost young again.

And he wondered, not for the first time, if he wasn’t in love with Hercules Hansen. 

As if he was aware of that thought, Herc raised his eyebrows at him, passed him some fruit, and said, “If you’re thinking of ringing anyone or checking your email, you’ve got another think coming.”

“What did you do with them?” Stacker realized he’d left his bags outside the bedroom door, with all his devices inside them, and scanned the room for his stuff. “I should at least see how Miss Mori’s doing.”

“They’re safe.” He grinned. Herc had a wonderfully rakish smile, where one side of his mouth turned up, and his eyes sparked with more life than Stacker had seen since the academy. More than a few people had fallen under his spell in the early days of the program, but Herc seemed oblivious to his effect on others. The strong, rugged jawline, the piercing blue eyes fringed by ginger lashes, and what Stacker remembered overhearing the twin sisters team from Hawaii referring to as his “bangin’ bod -- not too heavy, not too light, but juuuust right” were traits you couldn’t ignore, or ignore their effect upon yourself. 

“Stacks. You’re on island time now. You can sleep for 24 hours if you want to. You can sit on your arse and watch TV. You can swim or go out on a boat or hang out by the pool or get a massage. It’s all good. But the one thing you cannot do is worry about other people or the fucking PPDC.”

He drained his juice and stared at Stacker with those eyes the color of the deep sea. “And just for the record, I spoke to Miss Mori this morning and she wishes you well. She hopes you are recuperating. Her English has come along really well.”

Stacker ate some toast, drank some coffee. “She’s the best thing that’s happened to me since... I don’t know what I’d do without her now.” Losing Tamsin, his drift partner, his last connection to his dead sister, had meant losing his anchor in this strange new world. He would have had nothing without Mako.

“She’s your daughter.” 

“Luna used to take the piss about me having kids -- too focused on my career and no woman would put up with me long enough. I could never have imagined this.”

Herc leaned forward and squeezed Stacker’s hand. “Best surprises are the ones that bring someone new into your life.”

Maybe it was the circumstances, maybe it was knowing he was dying, but Stacker suddenly had a need to say things he’d never considered admitting. He grabbed Herc’s hand before he could take it back, lacing his fingers through Herc’s, and said, “Don’t know what I’d do without you, either.”

His chest tightened, as did his throat. He was in the deep drop when the conn-pod fell dozens of stories into a Jaeger’s body. He had no clue how Herc would react to this, but it was worth the risk of a punch to his gob. 

Herc glanced down at their hands, then up to Stacker’s eyes. “You’ll never have to find out.”

 

It hadn’t been easy, but Herc had finally convinced Stacker to do something other than fidget. They were on a glass-bottom boat excursion, the two of them sitting on opposite sides of the viewing panels as they traveled above the reef coral, paying probably more attention to each other than to the sights down below. As the boat’s pilot talked, the other folks on board pointed and ooohed and aaahed over the sea life. But Stacker mostly seemed, rather irritatingly, interested in watching Herc, who glanced down, then up again, over and over, only to keep finding Stacker’s gaze on him.

The man just had no idea how to have fun. Herc wondered if he’d always been like that, if joining the RAF had been the natural result of a neurotic need for discipline, order, precision, and fun-free living. When they’d first met, Herc had found him utterly fascinating -- along with at least half of the PPDC -- but also the most solemn person he’d ever met. He’d chalked it up to cultural differences, the Australian desire to find life and enjoyment in everything versus the dour, remote British officer’s demeanor, yet he couldn’t shake the need to be around Stacker all the time, to catch the rare glimpse of a flashing white smile, a low, rumbling chuckle.

They’d discovered so many mutualities in training, testing the early Jaegers, setting up the program, even while their differences added a certain spice to the friendship. Herc had never been one for rule books and staff meetings and strategizing, whereas Stacker thrived in that environment, even if his patience for anyone less competent than himself was nonexistent. He supposed it made sense that this R&R was so difficult for Stacker -- he was abruptly taken from the responsibility of the Rangers, there was nothing to plan, and he had given himself over to others to look after him. 

He mouthed the words “stop staring” at Stacker, who smiled wickedly and continued to stare. The others onboard appeared oblivious to this little game. As the boat turned back to the island, Herc moved over to Stacker’s side. “Keep looking at me like that and I’ll accidentally knock you overboard and leave you for the sharks.”

Stacker just laughed, whatever game he’d been playing in his mind seemingly satisfied by Herc’s response.

“What’s got into you, arsehole?”

“That’s how you talk to your superior officer?”

“When he’s acting like a tosser, I do.”

“Dunno. Just...like looking at you, I suppose. Been a long time since I’ve had a mate to spend time with.”

Herc shook his head. “That’s just sad.” When the boat pulled up at the dock, he patted Stacker’s arm quickly a few times, and said, “Let’s get a hamper, have a picnic at the beach on the other side of the island. We can declare it our own personal Picnic Day.”

Stacker looked at him like he’d grown three heads. “What?”

He waved a hand. “Never mind.” 

Once they’d successfully acquired food, they walked through the rainforest to the shore, away from the daytrippers and other resort guests. The more time they spent together, the more Herc wanted to be away from others, to be alone with Stacker and revel in the quiet. 

After throwing a blanket down under the shade of a tree, they ate without conversation, enjoying the sound of waves lapping at the shore, birds in the trees behind them. Up to the left, Herc could see a turtle sunning itself on the sand. 

Herc hadn’t felt this relaxed, this happy, since the time he and Ange had been here on their honeymoon. The words swept through his mind from the day before: _love you like I do._

Stacker wiped his mouth, threw his napkin down. “This is brilliant. But there’s no way we can eat all this.” 

“They might be getting a little carried away spoiling us,” Herc said. “But I haven’t eaten this well in...it’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

Stacker raised his sunglasses and fixed his gaze on Herc, gave him a sympathetic smile. Then he lay back on the blanket, settling his hands across his belly. Herc put the food away, refilled Stacker’s cup with the extremely expensive wine the girl in the café had given them, as if she’d been putting a picnic together for a royal couple’s romantic getaway. The freebies were giving him guilt pangs.

Herc gazed out at the water, reflecting on how different it all was when you were outside of a Jaeger. How quickly they’d grown accustomed to the way the world looked from so many meters up, protected by a skin of impermeable metal. For some reason, the kaiju had so far come ashore in Sydney Harbour, in Melbourne, but hadn’t yet gone near the Reef, so this area remained untouched by the destruction, worlds away from disaster. 

“Penny for your thoughts,” Stacker said, and Herc turned back toward him. Stacker had his arms up behind his head, the muscles stretched taut, his t-shirt hitched up a bit on his belly. Christ, he was hot.

“Just wondering if it’s wrong to feel happy.” Might as well get it out in the open, as peculiar as it was to talk about emotions so much. This was turning out to be a strange holiday.

Stacker sat up, pulled his t-shirt off, and lay back down. “Nah, mate. It doesn’t mean we’ve forgot them or they don’t matter. They’d want us to be happy, even if it’s only for a little while.”

Herc leaned over on his elbow, maybe closer to Stacker than he should be, but he was a little buzzed from the sun, the meal, the wine. Sliding Stacker’s sunglasses off, he said, “I _am_ happy. Now.”

With one hand, Stacker reached up and touched the side of Herc’s face; with his other hand he drew Herc down by the shoulder. Herc was weightless, frozen, his mind filled with stunning silence, as Stacker brought his mouth to his. 

Allowing himself to sink in to the kiss, Stacker’s plush lips moving against his own, Herc opened to him, the taste of his mouth and the smell of his skin a shot of adrenaline that went straight to his brain. After a few minutes, Herc pulled away, asking, “Stacks?”

Stacker ran his thumb across Herc’s lower lip. “Yes, Herc,” he said, to the unasked question they both knew. “Yes.” Diving down to his mouth again, he kissed Stacker with a frantic need, his hands grasping furiously at Stacker’s shoulders, his neck, his arms. He poured himself into Stacker, with a yearning like the neural flood of someone else’s heart in the drift, and he floated there with Stacker, mouths, limbs, bodies together.

He didn’t even know what this was -- some kind of hangover from all their drifts together? Trying to fill up the empty, black holes of their lives after everyone they’d lost? Pure physical want from men who had become prisoners of an endless war? He wanted to ask Stacker what they were doing, but he didn’t need to; Stacker seemed to hear him and held him tighter and kissed him harder. 

He pulled his own jeans down and kicked them off, then pulled Stacker’s shorts off, brushing his cock with the back of his hand. Straddling him, Herc ran his hands up and down Stacker’s long torso, then lay atop him, skin to skin, muscle to muscle. They moved against each other, heat and friction, that first scorching jolt of a neural handshake made physical, until he dropped off a cliff, he and Stacks together, floating, drifting.

When Herc refocused his thoughts on the now, he didn’t know how much time had passed. They lay on their backs, breathing hard, staring up at the dappled light of the sky through the trees, and Stacker said in his sleepy lion’s rumble, “You had to know, H. All this time.”

“Maybe,” he replied, and reached out to grab hold of Stacker’s arm. “Maybe I did. I just didn’t know what to do about it.” He had seen it, of course he had: glimpses of his own face limned in light, fragments of their times together like glittering shards of glass, brilliant, translucent. The smiles, the laughter, the tears reserved only for him. Now it all made sense.

Stacker laughed quietly, like he’d heard a private joke and didn’t want anyone else to know about it. “Drift compatible. We always were.”

 

“And you said there was nothing to do here,” Herc said. He was above Stacker on the bed, in him, all around him, his hand heavy on the back of Stacker’s sweaty neck, his lips warm against Stacker’s ear. Then he ran his tongue along Stacker’s ear, took the lobe in his teeth, and Stacker came hard in Herc’s hand, hips pushing into the bed.

His body was alive, his skin awake to every sensation. Breezes from the open windows in the cool of the evening washed over him, the rain falling outside that sounded like the high strings on a guitar, playing a song he had forgotten. Everything was new again; he could believe he wasn’t sick, but instead reborn, strong again. 

He rolled over after Herc pulled out of him. Strange thought, that. Neither one of them had had anything resembling a sex life since this whole thing started, no relationships except with their own hands. 

“Sometimes I wondered if I was mad,” Stacker said idly, wiping the spunk off his belly.

Herc didn’t bother to raise his head, his face planted firmly into the pillow and one of his arms dangling over the edge of the bed. Sweat shone on his back, bringing his freckles and his scars into sharp relief. “Everyone in the PPDC wonders that too.” He laughed, and the warm treacle sound of it brought curlicues of desire to Stacker’s lower belly again. “What specifically?”

“You. Me. The things that stayed in my mind after a drift. All the things I expected to see: your life, Angela, Cha--uck, Chuck” -- he was not getting used to that anytime soon --“the way you fought and what you wanted me to see. But there was something else, always: you and me in the kwoon, you and me in the drivesuit room, you and me out drinking, you and me.”

Herc turned his face to Stacker and smiled, but typically didn’t say anything in response. Stacker traced the lines of one of Herc’s many tattoos, leaned over and kissed one of the red stars under his biceps. 

Glancing toward the window, Herc said, “Rain’s stopped.” He threw his arm across Stacker’s shoulders, hooked a leg around his hip. Stacker loved the way his dark hand looked splayed across the white, white skin of Herc’s hip. “We should go on that nighttime nature walk. Get out of the room for a change.”

“I thought everything in this country wanted to kill you. Isn’t wandering about an Australian rainforest at night too dangerous? ”

“ _Most_ things want to kill you. But they do these walks all the time, and they haven’t lost anyone yet.” Herc’s eyes were only half open, he spoke in dreamy, slow syllables, and Stacker marveled at how his dick was throbbing again -- he was just a Pavlov’s dog, reacting to Herc’s midnight-velvet voice. “At least it’s not the time of year for stingers.”

“Stingers?”

“Stinging jellyfish. There’s one or two can kill you.” The word sounded like “jillyfish” in Herc’s accent. Stacker never got tired of listening to him -- the voice, the accent, the careful way he spoke. It might be worth experimenting to see if Herc could make him come just by talking to him. “It’s a very painful way to die.”

“Yet you continue to persuade me to swim...”

“You can always get kitted up in a stinger suit if you’re _afraid_.” He poked Stacker’s side. Stacker had seen those -- head to toe bodysuits with feet and mittens and hoods, the most ridiculous-looking things on earth. 

“Not a bleeding chance.”

Suddenly Herc slapped his arse and shot up out of the bed. “Come on. Let’s go look at wildlife.” He watched Herc pull his shorts and t-shirt on; he thought he’d been so familiar with that body before, from watching him suit up for combat, watching him strip off the drivesuit, fighting in the kwoon. Seeing Herc in this new light was...revelatory. There was a freckle on the left side of his lower lip Stacker wanted to bite.

Grumbling, Stacker got out of bed. There was no point in pretending he wouldn’t follow Herc Hansen anywhere.

 

Herc had forgot the sweetness of waking next to someone, feeling their breath on your neck or their hand on your chest. Wake before them and listen to the rhythm of their breathing, watch their face, free of the concerns of the day. 

Even after years in the service, Stacker had never been one to wake quickly -- he usually mumbled and muttered about, rubbing his face, taking forever to get out of bed. Herc watched him now silently, waiting for his eyes to open, but Stacker resolutely refused to wake up, so Herc ran a finger along the edge of his moustache, down his jawline, around his ear, until Stacker put his hand over his eyes and rolled on to his back. 

Hiding his eyes with his arm, Stacker grumbled, “That sun’s too bright, mate.”

“Going to a tropical island and bitching about the sun is like buying champagne and complaining about the bubbles.”

“Tosser.” Stacker draped his other arm over Herc’s belly. “You dreamt about Chuck last night.”

“Did I?” Herc never really remembered dreams, which was odd, since he always remembered a drift.

“He’ll grow up, get some wisdom. He’ll know that no parent could ever decide to save themselves over their child.” He finally opened his eyes and looked at Herc with that combination of sternness and kindness that was peculiar to Stacker Pentecost. “He’ll learn to love you again.” _Learn to love you like I do._

He chose, as usual when it came to talking about his son, to change the subject. “When you’re awake enough…” Herc said into his ear, “I want to climb you like a mountain.”

 

 _The end always comes too soon._ There were only a few days left to them on the island; Stacker tried to focus on the here and now but he’d always had a tendency to get caught on the impending. Luna had teased him about it as a child, called it his “Sunday mood,” because instead of enjoying his last school-free hours, he’d be cross from the moment he woke up, knowing Monday was just round the corner. It was something he’d hated about himself, tried to change, but it wasn’t till military school and the RAF that it had been beaten out of him. 

Herc was good at keeping him busy; snorkeling, swimming, and rather hilariously tackling windsurfing, which Stacker had hoped would be more like piloting a Jaeger than it turned out to be. But mostly they fucked. 

He’d tried -- from the poolside bar to dinner on the beach -- but none of it appealed like being with Herc. It was as necessary as breath; he was weak without it, empty. Would they have to return to acting as though they were strangers to each other’s bodies? How was he supposed to do that?

Stacker watched Herc come out of the surf, skirting a hand over his wet hair, water running down in a trail to the waistband of his shorts. The skin on his shoulders was reddening from the sun. Stacker thought he would happily lick every freckle on Herc’s finely sculpted body if he let him. As if he’d heard the thought, Herc slid his shorts off, took the towel from Stacker’s hand, and dried off as Stacker watched, breathing heavily. Before Herc could flop down on the blanket, Stacker said, “Stay there.”

He took Herc’s cock in his mouth, felt it harden, heard Herc’s panting breaths. No, he didn’t want to give this up, he didn’t know how to let go of being able to do this. “Jesus Christ, Stacks. Jesus.” When Herc came, his legs quivered and his fingers dug into Stacker’s neck, and he swore a blue streak. No one on earth could swear like an Australian; Stacker relished knowing he brought it on. When Herc sank to his knees in front of Stacker, he said, “Fuck me sideways. I’m an old man, Stacks. You gotta give me something to rest against.” He pushed Stacker backwards and growled, “Your turn.” 

“And you said I didn’t know how to have fun.” As Herc bent over him, he let out a gust of laughter, which just made Stacker all the harder.

 

They watched the sun set from the westernmost point of the island on their last night together, Herc leaning back between Stacker’s knees, his head on Stacker’s chest. 

“First time I saw the Southern Cross was when I came to Sydney after the attack. It was something I’d always wanted to see, one of those emblematic things you learn about Down Under. Got there and then...there it was. One of those life list things. But seeing it was wrapped up in a time with so much misery and pain.” It was also the first time he’d met Herc Hansen face to face.

“When you came to tell me Angela was gone.”

“I expected you to hate me.”

“I know. Felt that the first time we drifted. You were just the messenger. I already knew.” He touched the back of Stacker’s hand. “I remember the first nights in Alaska. When we were out breaking our balls on those fucking endurance trials. I’d never heard a wolf call, never imagined hearing one. Chilled me to the bone, but it was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever heard.” Herc sighed. “This war...all these terrible things. But it’s also brought us so much we could never have hoped to see.”

 _Like this,_ Stacker thought with such a rush of love his chest ached. For the first time since his diagnosis, he wanted to fight this cancer, to live beyond the doctors’ expectations. Now he had not only Mako to keep him going, but Herc as well. A family again.

 

On the boat back to Cairns, Herc finally let Stacker have his devices back, but he left them in his bags instead. Though on the airplane back to Sydney, Stacker pulled out his tablet and said, “There’s something I’ve wanted to show you.” He called up diagrams for Herc. “This bad girl’s the Mark V. They’ve finally settled on the design. She’ll be all yours. First to test, then to use.”

Herc grinned up at him, flipping through the plans. “She’s a beaut. When can I test her?”

“As soon as they put the last screws in. It’s early days yet. You’ll have to come up to Alaska on occasion, make sure things are done right.” 

Herc gazed at him with those eyes of sea and sky. “I’ll need someplace to bunk down.”

“That can be arranged.” He grabbed the front of Herc’s shirt and pulled him in for a kiss. Stacker supposed he ought to care that someone might see, but he really didn’t give a shit. They’d walked through the fire together and come out the other side, discovering they still had the capacity to open themselves to someone else. “My hand will always be on your back. No matter where we are, I’m on your six. With you till the end.”

Herc pressed his forehead to Stacker’s. “Bloody right you are.”

**Author's Note:**

> I started this before the writer began retconning the hell out of everything about the original script and novelization, especially as regards Herc Hansen.
> 
> Thanks so much to Dorinda for the lovely beta read and cheerleading!


End file.
